If freedom entails responsibility, a fair proportion of mankind would prefer
servitude; for it is far, far better to receive three meals a day and be
told what to do than to take the consequences of one's own self-destructive
choices. It is, moreover, a truth universally unacknowledged that freedom
without understanding of what to do with it is a complete nightmare.

Such freedom is a nightmare, of course, not only for those who possess it,
but for everyone around them. A man who does not know what to do with his
freedom is like a box of fireworks into which a lighted match is thrown: he
goes off in all directions at once. And such, multiplied by several
millions, is modern society. The welfare state is - or has become - a giant
organisation to shelter people from the natural consequences of their own
disastrous choices, thus infantilising them and turning them into
semi-dependants, to the great joy of their power-mad rulers.

Comments:

An excellent website.

While I am aware it must be difficult keeping up with Dalrymple's fecund pen, you are missing a most excellent essay by the good Doctor from the summer 2006 issue of City Journal, titled: The Terrorists Among Us. Here is an excerpt, rather relevant to me and my past, that brought floods of tears to my eyes:

"Muslims are hardly the only ones, either in the past or the present, who experience difficulty in relinquishing their most cherished ideas and presuppositions. It is a normal human trait. (Darwin, in his Autobiography, tells us that when he came across a fact that threw some doubt upon the theory he was developing, he wrote it down, for otherwise he was sure to forget it.)

But when a system of ideas and set beliefs claims eternal validity and infallibility, when people adopt that system as their primary source of identity, and when into the bargain those people find themselves in a position of long-standing and seemingly irreversible technical and economic inferiority and dependence via-a-vis people with very different ideas and beliefs, resentment is certain to result.

Not wishing [or inclined by facts and emperical observation - My Additions] to relinquish their cherished ideology-their only possible source of collective pride and accomplishment-they seek to explain the technical and economic superiority of others by different kinds of denigratory mental maneuvers. They may claim, for example, that the West has achieved its preeminence by illicit use of force and pillage, by exploiting and appropriating the oil of Muslim lands, say.

The justice of a criticism does not depend upon the motive that lies behind it, of course. But the claim about the exploitation of oil is not merly self serving; it is patently absurd. If anything, the direction of the exploitation has been precisely the opposite, for merely by virtue of their fortunate geographical location, and with scarcely any effort on their part, the people of the Arabian peninsula and elsewhere have enjoyed a high standard of living thanks entirely to the ingenuity of those whom they accuse of exploitation and with whom the oil resource would not be an economic resource at all."

Just so. A human trait indeed! One observes this trait amongst so many differing groups of people in relation to others and even within any given family.

- AdeOluOla Ojutilade

- Aug-08-2006, 11:05

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Where is the review of the book?

- William Haddington

- Jul-13-2005, 07:58

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I'm workin' on it still. Thanks for the link!

- oj

- Nov-24-2003, 19:32

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I couldn't find the review. Is there a missing link, or is it me missing it?

I know it would be impossible to keep your listing up-to-date on Dalrymple's writings but this struck me:

http://www.nationalreview.com/issue/dalrymple200311210857.asp

I thought the way this sentence sliced through the pretension was humane and rather beautiful in a tragic way:

"He found it far easier, and no doubt more important, to evince concern about the whole world in the abstract than to behave decently toward the woman in his bedroom."